A long-distance train charges past, as though it cares nothing for our town and our lives. The faces flashing by must belong to the happiest people in the world. In the wake of the train I search for empty books of matches. Their town of origin is stamped on rough cardboard: Vladivostock, Tomsk, Khabarovsk. The names make my head swim.
At dusk I make my way over to the workers’ barracks. Throwing open the outer doors I yelclass="underline" “Hurrah!” and charge down the corridor, punching the long-johns and bras that dangle overhead. Outside the door of my friend Victor’s room I whistle our pirate signal.
“Who’s there, friend or foe?”
“Crusoe.”
Victor’s parents sit at the table eating rye bread and potatoes. His grandparents snore in their bed above the stove and his baby brother bawls unheeded in the corner. Victor and I wrestle on the floor until his parents scream at us to stop. Then Victor picks up his accordion and we sing old folk songs and sea shanties. Even the grandfather gets up from the stove to join in the chorus. I’m so out of tune he laughs: “Eh, Vanya, a bear must’ve farted in your ears.”
Victor and the other boys who live in the barracks used to make fun of me because my parents are Party members and we have a home-help. But they’re not malicious and soon grow tired of teasing me. I feel comfortable with them for they aren’t ashamed of poverty and have no pretensions.
Some of the barracks’ families are so poor the children have only one pair of shoes between them. In bad weather they take it in turns to go to school. I don’t want to stand out from the rest so when I leave our flat in the morning I run down to the basement, take off my shoes and hide them behind the hot-water pipes. But I come home from school to find my shoes have gone; my trick has been discovered. My step-father Dobrinin rages while my mother asks why I did it.
“To be like the rest.”
“Vanya, there is nothing admirable about poverty. There is no shame in working hard for a better life.”
But it is my mother I am ashamed of. She struts through the town like a film star in high heels and expensive dresses. Local children jeer as she passes by with her nose in the air: “There’s shit on your shoes, Madame!” They parade in her wake, holding their noses and wiggling their bottoms until they collapse into the mud, hooting with laughter and whistling at her disappearing back. My mother pretends not to hear. She despises the barrack dwellers as only someone who comes from that background can.
My step-grandparents live in a dacha at Studioni Avrag, a settlement further up the Volga. Before the revolution the Dobrinins were members of the nobility. Now they’re ‘former people’ and receive no pension. They survive by growing flowers. Their neighbours say that flowers are useless and that they should grow tomatoes and cucumbers instead. But Granny loves her gladioli and asters. Her fingers are bent and clawed and in the evenings she complains of back ache. After supper she puts on her night-cap and gown and retires with her French novel. She keeps a porcelain chamber-pot under her bed, for nothing will make her visit the earth closet at night.
Grandad is a quiet man but when he speaks it’s to the point. He’s always busy in his garden. I help look after his two goats, making sure they don’t jump over the wall to nibble the neighbours’ apple trees. Sometimes they escape and then we hear the neighbour woman chasing them, shouting: “Hey, you Americans, hooligans, get out of here!”
My grandparents have a daughter, Ira. Although she’s my stepfather’s sister Ira isn’t like him at all. Tall, strong and fearless, she rows Granny and me across the Volga for a picnic one day. My mother swims after the boat. She is a good swimmer, but to tease me Granny asks: “Aren’t you afraid your mother will drown?”
“No,” I reply. “I have Auntie Ira.”
My grandparents complain that the new dam being built across the Volga will harm our natural environment, that animals will be driven away and fish will disappear from the river. I know they’re wrong. The dam will give electricity to everyone and bring us closer to communism.
Studioni Avrag is a summer resort for professors and doctors. I play with their children. Each year, as August draws to a close, we bid each other farewell until the next summer. But one year, just after the end of the war, few of my playmates return. In their place young and beautiful newcomers arrive in shining black Emka limousines. They wear well-cut uniforms and laugh loudly. Through the fence I glimpse lithe figures leaping to catch volley balls. The adults speak about the newcomers in whispers.
I am a white raven amongst these people, for I come from godforsaken Chapaevsk and I tend goats. I have to prove myself. I’m no good at football but I can dive off the river ferries. When the boats tie up at the dock I climb their sides to the third deck and launch myself into the air like a swallow. Last year a boy dived under the ferry’s paddle and was killed. Now the sailors keep a strict watch, so it’s even more exciting to sneak past them. Finally they catch me and slap tar all over my body. It takes days to clean the tar off, and I get into big trouble at home.
An old man is fishing from the quay. He calls me over and points across the Volga. “You see some strange fish in these parts, my lad. Over there is a place called Gavrilova Field. That is where prisoners go to die, full of dysentery and pellagra. They send them from camps all over the country. They’re already goners by the time they reach Gavrilova Field.”
I run away from the man. For a long time after that I try not to think about the place across the river.
I hide behind the latrine with a rock in my hand. Auntie Praskovya waddles through the mud clutching her squares of newsprint. She’s a bad-tempered old lady who chases us boys out of her yard because she says we stop her chickens laying. Wood creaks. A sigh. Burying my nose in my collar I lift the trapdoor and hurl my brick into the cess-pit. It splashes. There’s a loud shriek. I run off, glancing back to see Auntie Praskovya pulling up her drawers. “Ivan Petrov, you’ll be an alcoholic when you grow up!”
I laugh at her prediction. I don’t like alcohol, although I know it’s the joy of adult life. I’ve seen them get drunk often enough. Most people drink meths or some other vodka substitute because the real thing is expensive and hard to get hold of. Besides, you can never tell what has been added to it; everyone knows someone who’s died from adulterated vodka.
We call methylated spirits Blue Danube. It’s sold for lighting primus stoves and is in great demand. It is even drunk at weddings, with fruit syrup added to the women’s glasses. My mother usually drinks surgical spirit which she steals from her factory, adding burned sugar to improve the flavour. She sneers at the ‘arse-washing’ water of the barracks’ families, which is home-brew made from hot water, sugar and yeast. Every room has a tub of this muddy liquid bubbling away under a blanket in the corner.
On birthdays and holidays the adults give us children glasses of beer. Knowing what’s expected of us we stagger about, clutching at walls. They laugh, but I know the adults also exaggerate their drunkenness. Victor’s father once spent a night in the police cells for pissing against a statue of Lenin. “Lucky I was drunk,” he said afterwards. “If I’d been sober I’d have got ten years.”
“Get washed, Vanya,” my mother orders. “We have company today.”
“But I want to go to Victor’s.” I hate it when my parents drink.
“Enough! You will stay here.”
The visitors arrive.
“Oh Anna Konstantinova, what a marvellous spread!” cries our lady guest.